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 Managing Content for Competitive Advantage
Ford, CNN, And Allfirst Financial Utilize Content To Generate Revenue,
Improve Productivity, And Attract Customers
By John Pallatto
August 01, 2002 - It seems hard to believe that a few years ago
companies were prepared to spend millions of dollars in human and mechanical
resources to publish content online without any careful consideration of how
much it would cost and what sort of a return it would generate. These days
content is only valued in the enterprise in terms of the revenue it can
generate, the paying customers it can attract, or the employees it can
effectively serve. Enterprises such as Ford Motor Co. look for content
management tools that will help them rapidly update their Web sites with the
fewest number of technical people. In the process, Ford found it was able to
rebuild its heavily trafficked consumer Web site with enough efficiency to
reduce its server and network hardware requirements by 60 percent. Or, in
the case of cable news network CNN, its business managers were looking for a
way to economically digitize thousands of broadcast videos into a format
that could be retrieved more readily and licensed to other video producers
to create new revenue streams.
Another company, Allfirst Financial Inc., wanted a content management
system that would make its Web site more dynamic and give customers access
to more online banking features. The common denominator in these efforts is
that to achieve effectiveness, a content management system has to allow the
organization to turn on a dime and deliver the latest information about
products, prices, and prospects on a daily or even hourly basis
CNN's Video Assets CNN solved its need to obtain greater value out of its
massive video library by implementing IBM's Media Production Suite,
including its Content Manager product, to support a general shift to digital
media from analog tapes to edit and archive its video assets. The workflow
process management capabilities of Media Production Suite with the Content
Manager were "quite simply a base requirement for us to meet our future
production goals," explains Gordon Castle, senior vice president of Internet
technology with CNN in Atlanta.
CNN selected the IBM Content Manager mainly because it needed to work
with a huge repository of content, currently about 150,000 hours of archived
tape and growing, Castle says. The system is based on IBM's DB2 database
running on IBM AIX servers. The system also uses IBM's WebSphere application
service to manage related Web page templates, he explains.
"Overall, we have been making a move to more digital production and we
have been replacing analog tape-based systems with digital server-based
systems," Castle says.
As a next phase for this project, CNN will link the digital content
management system to a networked middleware system that will "gather all of
our media management applications and storage systems across the CNN
enterprise," Castle says. The company is currently studying the
specifications of the enterprise system that it will likely start to build
in 2003, according to Castle.
New Revenue Streams The goal of this transition was to set up a digital
content search and retrieval system that would make it easier for CNN to
resell its video content and news to customers, which primarily include
documentary producers and television production shops, Castle explains.
A key benefit of the move to a digital archive and production system is
"just simple efficiency," he says. Once the tapes "are digital in forms they
are easier to manage, they're easier to get at and you know that somebody
isn't going to walk away with a tape," Castle says.
Another benefit includes the ability to digitally search the tape library
archive, which speeds retrieval and makes it readily available for reuse for
a variety of business purposes by a number of different organizations within
CNN and by its customers.
With the digital archive in place, CNN stands to gain additional revenue
through its Image Source division, which licenses use of the company's video
and images. "Because we can provide better access to the content, we can
improve sales there," he explains.
The long-established method of "going to a librarians and searching
through stacks of tapes was not the right experience if you want to
aggressively distribute content," Castle says.
Many organizations have begun to look into digital media management, but
have trouble figuring out how to show that it makes sense and why they need
it now, Castle notes.
"We view it as not only nice to have, but it is absolutely essential. We
view it as important as plumbing and electricity," Castle explains, because
its goal is to provide financial benefits to the company.
CNN has calculated the savings and potential revenue increases from its
digital media system, but Castle declined to disclose them. "I can tell you
that the project makes financial sense" for the company, he says.
Cost Effective Production Allfirst Financial Inc., a banking and
financial services company based in Baltimore, Md., had more modest
ambitions for its content management implementation. It wanted a relatively
inexpensive product with all the key features necessary to upgrade its Web
site.
Allfirst worked with Merant Plc.'s enterprise content management system
to redesign its corporate customer service Web site. This package, renamed
Merant Collage in the latest version released in June, combines Web content
management with the software configuration and code management that have
always been part of the company's roots.
The banking company selected the Merant system and started working with
it late in 2001 because it provided the basic tools that Allfirst needed to
build more dynamic features into its site, says Erik Steenson, senior
Internet engineer with Allfirst Bank.
"This product seemed to have all the basics and be something that I could
get into our environment very quickly and pull off a successful project," he
says.
The decision was "financially a no-brainer" because Allfirst was already
working with the content management system before Merant released the 3.0
version under the new Collage name. "It gives you a lot of functionality,
it's easy to implement and a lot less expensive than a lot of their
competitors," Steenson says.
The content contribution editor, one of the new features, particularly
interested Steenson. It allows contributors to write and edit only the
sections of a Web page for which they are responsible. Contributors can use
the built-in browser-based editor or use their own writing and editing and
production tools including Microsoft Office applications or Macromedia's
Dreamweaver design package. "For non-technical users it really is slick,"
Steenson says.
Static to Dynamic "The fact that it is [Java2 Enterprise Edition]
compliant and we can preview dynamic content directly on the system is also
pretty huge," he says. Since many of these features are new in the 3.0
version, the Bank's Web production team just implemented them, he says. But
they will use them as Allfirst continues to enhance its Web site.
Allfirst.com is still a fairly static site, Steenson says. But "over time
it will become more dynamic" as the bank adds more customer service features
built with J2EE.
In the past year, Allfirst has added a number of fundamental online
banking features to the site, including bill payment, funds transfer,
balance reports, and statement downloads. New applications, Steenson says,
will include online application forms for various loan products and
financial services.
Ford Motor Co. wanted to acquire an enterprise-scale content management
system that improved the efficiency and productivity of its Web publishing
processes.
Ford's Web development team worked with Microsoft Content Management
Server in late 2001 to replace a previous system that wasn't powerful enough
to handle volume of material it publishes on www.ford.com, says Kevin
Girbach, IT manager for vehicle and fleet systems with Ford in Dearborn,
Mich.
Heavy Traffic Ford.com is one of the most heavily trafficked automotive
sites on the Internet. A related site, www.fordvehicles.com has consistently
been the most heavily trafficked automotive OEM domain, as measured by the
ComScore/Media Metrix audience measurement service.
Ford currently uses Content Management Server to produce the Ford.com
site, Girbach says. "We do have plans to deploy the tool throughout pretty
much all the brands in the Ford umbrella," he continues. With the earlier
content management tool, "we were experiencing low availability, which for
us was less than 95 percent and the operational costs were high," Girbach
says. "It was taking us essentially two software engineers and two to three
content people to manage the site." Even with this staffing level the Web
team was still pressed to publish content at the volume and schedule that
Ford desired.
With the Microsoft product in place, the production team produced a
redesigned Ford.com site in 13 weeks, which Girbach says dramatically
improved productivity. The new system also reduced hardware requirements for
the site by 60 percent and improved uptime from 95 to 100 percent, Girbach
says, because the new content management system produced more compact,
reliable, and faster loading pages.
But for the business owners of the site, Ford's marketing group, the
biggest benefit was the ability to quickly publish "fresh and relevant
information," he explains. Ford launched the redesigned site just before one
of the big marketing events of the year, the North American Auto Show in
January, Girbach explains. Content Management Server "proved to be very
agile as far as being able to roll information to the public and press in
real time on the Web site as it was happening at the auto show," he says.
The development team for the redesigned Web site included about eight IT
professionals, Girbach says. Now that the site is in maintenance mode, it
usually requires no more than two developers to update it, he explains.
However Ford continues to train more IT professionals to work with the
Content Management Server since it is becoming a standard for Ford's
automotive marketing sites, he says.
The company also has three new Web site development projects underway.
The company is developing a North American dealer network portal in
Dearborn. Ford is also developing Web sites for its Volvo and Land Rover
brands in Europe with Microsoft providing local technical support for those
projects, according to Girbach.
PeopleSoft Inc. selected Interwoven Inc.'s TeamSite content management
system when it decided to establish a standard tool to develop all its
publicly accessed Web sites.
A comparison of TeamSite with several other content management products
showed that it best fit the company's environment, according to Jason
Blessing, vice president of information systems with PeopleSoft in
Pleasanton, Calif.
"They do a great job on the creation, management and approval of
content," which makes it a good complement to PeopleSoft's human resources
portal system that is designed to provide a menu of information based on an
individual's business role, Blessing says.
"We also like the fact that that it has a fairly light hardware
footprint. It snaps right into our enterprise architecture," he explains.
Content producers and owners can take responsibility for updating the Web
site, which remains the key benefit, he says. TeamSite allows the IT
department to create Web page templates that can be filled in by content
writers and editors in PeopleSoft's marketing department. "Those templates
really take IT out of the delivery chain of serving up content on the Web
site," he says.
Before TeamSite was implemented, it took one to two weeks for an IT coder
to turn the basic content into HTML pages, he says. "Now content publishing
is pushed into the marketing team's hands. We now publish as frequently as
the business wants," Blessing explains.
The content management system gives PeopleSoft decision makers a central
place to review and approve content. "In the past people would chase around
for content approvals through e-mails, voice mails, and tracking people down
just by walking around the hallways," Blessing says.
TeamSite makes the approval process much more scalable for PeopleSoft's
highly distributed marketing organization. "This is the one place that
everybody comes to interact with our content, approve it, and publish it,"
Blessing says.
By speeding up the publishing process, TeamSite also improves the site's
performance as a marketing tool. The site generates 10 to 25 qualified sales
leads each day based on specific marketing content published on the site.
TeamSite allows PeopleSoft's marketing department to update the site on a
daily or weekly basis with content designed to attract a specific set of
sales prospects, Blessing says. Or the site can track the interest of sales
leads that were drawn to the site based on advertisements running in a
specific city or in a specific publication, he says.
PeopleSoft is currently working on a second TeamSite implementation to
manage content on its sales force portal where the sales representatives get
information on the latest marketing programs and events, according to
Blessing. PeopleSoft also licensed the Interwoven MetaTagger product, which
improves the effectiveness of key word searches within a Web site to ensure
that visitors can readily find the most important information.
PeopleSoft also plans to evaluate two new Interwoven products: TeamDoc
and TeamCode, Blessing says. TeamDoc is a collaborative document management
system while TeamCode is a Web application management systems that lets
developers manage all the code as well as the text and graphical content
that go into Web applications. Interwoven introduced both products in April.
Creating 3G Content
BBC Technology, the media technology development arm of the British
Broadcasting Co., has turned to Artesia Technology Inc.'s digital asset
management system to manage the production on a variety of online content
for media and communications customers.
BBC Technology signed a five-year contract with Hutchinson 3G UK to
design, build, and operate a content delivery system for third-generation
wireless telecommunication service in the United Kingdom, according to Phil
Fearnley, director of new media technology with BBC Technology in London.
Hutchison 3G is a division of Hutchison-Whampoa Ltd., the Hong Kong-based
multinational conglomerate that has acquired several 3G wireless franchises
in the U.K. and Europe. BBC Technology was formed as part of an initiative
for the publicly supported TV broadcast network, so it could develop new
services and revenue streams that would reduce its dependence on TV license
fees in the U.K. to fund its broadcast programming.
BBC Technology will edit and manage existing BBC content streams or
streams for Hutchison's own content partners and reconfigure for
transmission over Hutchison's wireless system for display on the latest 3G
handsets, Fearnley says.
BBC will use Artesia Technologies Teams digital asset management system
to process the text, images, and graphics Hutchison 3G transmits over its
network, Fearnley says. Teams is one of a number of content editing and
production systems that BBC Technology works with on various products. It
selected Teams for the Hutchison 3G project because it can handle the
detailed workflows that are required to rapidly format and post content on a
3G system, he says.
"We take content in. We do some scrubbing on it and then we edit it down
to 3G size" so it can be effectively displayed on handset screens, he says.
The content might include scores or play-by-play information from the U.K.'s
soccer leagues, Wimbledon tennis championship, or any other content that is
in market demand, he explains.
The goal is to provide live or near-live content from multiple sources
connected to more static content that is posted somewhere on the Internet,
says Fearnley. For example, the system could flash news that U.K. soccer
superstar David Beckham has scored a goal within two minutes after it has
happened, followed by a 20-second video clip, and perhaps even a link to a
lifestyle story about his wife, former Spice Girl Victoria Beckham.
"We think this is ground-breaking stuff that we are working on" in terms
of the content processing and work flows that the BBC group is developing
with the Teams product, Fearnley says.
Bluefly Inc., which operates the Bluefly.com Internet outlet store for
designer fashions, looked for a content management server that would
streamline the way it displayed product images on its site.
The company selected the MediaRich Image Server from Equilibrium
Technologies Inc. to make it faster, easier, and less costly to update the
content of its site, says Marty Keane, vice president of product development
with Bluefly based in New York City.
Bluefly's content producers have had to load copies of the same product
image in multiple sizes to accommodate different page layouts. The number of
images that have to be loaded onto the site had become almost unmanageable,
Kane says. "It also limited our ability to change or modify our Web site" by
revising a page template, he explains. If the template change modified an
image size "we would have to go back and regenerate all the images in that
graphic size," Keane notes.
The MediaRich server will enable Bluefly to store one version of the
image and program the Web site software to automatically load images with
the dimensions directed by the templates, he says. Bluefly also wants to use
the server to dynamically load composite images or generate graphical text
on the fly.
Next, Bluefly plans to take advantage of the zoom feature in the server
to enable customers to enlarge product images at will, he says. By giving
customers the ability to get close-up views of products "we were hoping we
would both drive sales conversion and reduce returns," Keane says. These
improvements could help reduce production costs and increase sales revenue
for the site.
These examples show how enterprises are using a wide range of tools to
stretch the definition of content management. But they were working toward
common goals, getting the most out of their media assets while trying to
control production costs to help each organization meet its customer service
and financial goals. |
